Fox ruffles feathers over chlorine chickens
LIAM FOX has mocked concerns about the import of chlorine-washed chickens into the UK after Brexit and insisted it is just a “detail” of trade negotiations with the US.
Theresa May is facing a Cabinet split over the import of poultry treated with the chlorine wash process from the US, which is banned under EU rules but a fifth cheaper than British chicken.
Dr Fox, the International Trade Secretary, wants to allow the import of poultry after Brexit but is being opposed by Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, who has insisted food standards must not be downgraded.
Asked during a visit to Washington if he would be comfortable eating the chickens, Dr Fox responded: “The British media are obsessed with chlorinewashed chickens – a detail of the very end stage of one sector of a potential free trade agreement.”
He added: “We work on the premise that the British press corps in Washington never eat American chicken or beef when they are here due to their health worries.”
Chicken in the US is immersed in a chlorine dioxide solution to kill harmful bacteria such as salmonella. It costs American shoppers 21 per cent less than the equivalent product on UK shelves. Theresa May’s official spokesman refused to rule out allowing the import of chlorine washed chicken after Brexit. He said: “Our position when it comes to food is that maintaining the safety and public confidence in the food we eat is of the highest priority.” Dr Fox also told those who want Britain to stay in the European Union that they are “dreaming”.
He criticised “project fear” warnings of “economic Armageddon” in the run up to the referendum, which he said have failed to materialised.
However, he added that it would be “optimistic” to think a free-trade deal with the EU could be concluded by the time of Brexit in March 2019.
Peers warned that animal welfare standards could be undermined if postbrexit trade deals leave British farmers competing against less-regulated foreign rivals. The Government’s desire to secure trade deals could result in a “race to the bottom” on welfare as British producers are forced to cut costs, members of the cross-party energy and environment sub-committee warned.
To the post-brexit trade deals and a summer of fun. We may now get, from America, chlorine-washed chickens, hormone-fed beef and GM crops, currently all banned or restricted by bungling Brussels bureaucrats and their war on the freedom to eat chlorine-washed chicken. I look forward to watching Cabinet ministers feed their children these treats for the television cameras – presumably Boris Johnson could eat a whole chlorine-washed chicken, and then the despatch box.
But what might the Americans get in return, and is it any less terrifying than a chemical chicken that sprouted from Margaret Atwood’s brain?
Americans have mighty stomachs, and their appetites are at least twice as dangerous as their gun laws, which are stupid. The most important fact about American consumption is that, at Disneyland, milkshake costs less than bottled water; all hail the madness of the fattest people on earth.
Even so, what might an American think of our more interesting national dishes? The mountains of the Moon may hold no terrors for the dumpy cousins, but what would they make of the whelk, a sea-snail so ill-conceived it makes otherwise breezy recipe books sound like the more ominous Sibylline oracles?
British cuisine is for the congenitally lumpen. Who ate all the pies, goes the playground slur: well, we did. It is animal fat and carbohydrate puddings, pies and meats served with a muddy rainbow of root vegetables. I would not go so far as to call British cuisine a British revenge on the rest of the world, but it can, when required, double as such.
There are gruesome dishes, born of poverty, ingenuity and masochism: witness, for instance, the potted gizzard, brought to you, quite unwillingly, from the digestive tract of the chicken. One survivor of gizzard testifies that he cleaned clumps of grass and mud from the meat in preparation; he could, he said amazedly, almost observe the digestive tract in motion.
What of the jellied eel, fished from the Thames – a jelly to make a child weep tears of hate? What of devilled kidneys, which the braver Telegraph reader will have eaten on toast, presumably as a boast, for I cannot think of any other reason to eat them?
What of the Stargazy Pie of Cornwall – a pie with sardine faces peering out from the crust, as if to eat, or at least rebuke, the eater? What of the proper Cornish pasty – meat at one end, jam at the other, and a crust for the tin-miner to rub the poison off his hands at luncheon? What of the Scotch egg – an egg in sausage meat, then fried or baked in breadcrumbs – which even other Scots, inventors of the deep-fried Mars Bar, would consider a terrible threat to their health?
And yet we are proud of these strange British dishes and we flaunt their strangeness to the world; many London travel guides still suggest the credulous tourist try jellied eel. I would be curious to know how many of us eat any of these dishes regularly, or at all – as opposed to, say, chicken tikka masala – but that is not the point of them any more.
They are a different kind of sustenance now; not a meal, but an idea. They signify British character and so, despite the way they taste, I recommend them to you all.